A godless parent’s request

I got a request for a children’s book on atheism—something to counter the usual sunday school tripe kids are fed, a version of The God Delusion for the younger set. Offhand, I couldn’t think of a thing. So, I thought, I’d turn to the collective wisdom and see if anyone out there knows of one or two.

You know, there is a niche here—all of us who have raised kids have wished that somewhere there was a primer on skeptical thinking, the scientific method, and religious criticism that was appropriate for early readers or junior high school kids. If you can’t think of one that’s already been done, who’s willing to volunteer to write one?

Edward Wilson is doomed

Wilson wrote a nice book, The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), in which he argued that Christians should be leaders in good stewardship of the earth. Now some religious leaders have spoken out against such activities.

The Catholic church is babbling about an antichrist.

An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”.

After all, as we all know, when Christ returns he will be an isolationist industrialist who will rip through our natural resources to build up an awesome war machine. It says so in the Bible.

It’s not just the Catholics—Jerry Falwell is all worked up about Al Gore and global warming.

Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who has worked for decades to involve conservative Christians in politics, said Sunday the debate over global warming is a tool of Satan being used to distract churches from their primary focus of preaching the gospel.

Good ol’ Jerry, at least you can trust him to back up his assertions with evidence. Irrefutable evidence:

Falwell cited two Bible verses that he said apply to the global-warming debate: Psalm 24:1-2, which declares “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof,” and Genesis 8:22, which says there will be seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter for “as long as the earth remains.”

Uh, what?

That’s pretty much meaningless. Minnesota has seasons; Israel has seasons; I think, though, that most people would agree that there are substantial differences between the two. Even during the ice ages there were seasons. Global warming will not end seasonal differences in temperature and precipitation.

This is a problem. Trying to argue idiots who believe in magic, all-powerful words in one book into following a path of enlightened self-interest is difficult — it would probably be easier to first destroy the source of the foolishness, that book and the church organization.

A good protest should draw a crowd

Some of you may recall that I got rather cranky with some sensitive Catholics who wanted to cancel a play — “The Pope and the Witch”, currently playing on the Twin Cities campus. Unfortunately, although we’d hope to go, we had this succession of snowstorms that made traveling impractical this past week (I may still go at the end of this coming week, since the last day of the play coincides with the last day of classes before spring break and my birthday). Anyway, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press picked up on it. I put the article below the fold to preserve the fact that they quoted me, and to let you read the tale of some very whiny Catholics.

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Why comparative religion classes will never work in American public schools

Sometimes I think that what public education in this country really needs is a good general requirement for a course in comparative religion. I’ve thought that one obstacle, though, would be finding teachers who wouldn’t warp it to proselytize for their favorite cult. It turns out that there’s another major problem: parents will sue teachers who make their kids think about that which must be believed dogmatically.

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Classic octopus

Adam Cuerden sent me a scan of this interesting article from the 1871 Illustrated London News, and I decided I was being terribly selfish keeping it to myself, so here you go — don’t say I never share. The image that accompanies it is a wonderful example of old-time illustration; click on it for a larger version.

As the media usually does, it plays up the horrible danger of this alien creature.

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Report from Planet Righty

Tim Lambert summarizes an informal survey of 59 right-wing bloggers: 100% of them deny the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming, contradicting the scientific evidence. They were also asked about other issues—the majority approve of the “surge” in Iraq, think Bush is doing an acceptable job in foreign policy, and believe Democrats like the idea of losing the war in Iraq, but only on global warming is their unanimity.

It’s too bad the survey didn’t ask about other science issues. I’d like to know if they are similarly wrong about evolution, HIV as the cause of AIDS, and whether the earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa.

A reminder to any Ann Coulter fans

A while back, I wrote a response to Coulter’s piss-poor excuse for a book, Godless. It’s actually fairly long and substantial; since there was absolutely no accurate statement of either fact or theory on the subject of evolution in the entire book, and since there was nothing specific to address, I took the time to make a link-rich collection of sources where anyone could look up the evidence for evolution, with suggestions of places where one could look up the basics of the theory. Writing a line-by-line rebuttal would have been a massive task, and one that Coulter fans would have ignored anyway.

At the end of that post, I made a challenge. I said that I would make a comprehensive, detailed reply to any one paragraph in the chapters on evolution if anyone who’d read the book would come right out and state that it was an accurate and honest and supportable claim about the subject. I’m still waiting for anyone to stand up for Ann’s words. No one has, and it’s been about 9 months now.

I guess even her fans can’t defend anything in that book. Either that, or they just got it for the pictures.